Chapter 42
Bram
Her scent’s coming off her wrong. The honey’s gone dark and sour at the edges, all fear, and it drops a growl so low in my chest I have to swallow the whole thing down.
She doesn’t need my temper stacked on top of everything else.
So I keep my palm flat between her shoulder blades and let her feel the weight of it, nothing more.
It’s just the three of us now, down where the grass goes long at the bottom of the slope. Luna folded into my side. Maren a step off, mud drying on the toe of one boot.
Luna turns to her, and it comes out in a rush.
“Thanks, Mar.” Both her hands find the front of Maren’s coat and fist there. “If you hadn’t been here, I don’t even want to think about how that would’ve gone... What he would’ve done...”
Maren pulls her in and holds the back of her head. “Of course, babe. Always.”
I owe this woman more than I’ve got words for.
“Maren.” I wait until she looks at me over the top of Luna’s head. “Thank you so much for being there for her.”
She holds my eye a second, then smiles. “Well, somebody’s got to watch her back when you’re not looking.”
That pulls a breath out of Luna, half a laugh riding the end of it. I take it as a sign she’s climbing back up to herself, and I steer the two of them up the rise toward the lights.
“Let’s get something hot into you, somewhere more comfortable than a wet field,” I say. “I’ll text Ash and Reed so they can find us.”
“Yeah. I could do a hot drink,” Luna says.
Word travels faster than any of us walk at a thing like this.
By the time we reach the cider tent the woman at the urn already has three cups poured, and when I reach for my wallet she flaps both hands at me, scandalized, and tells me my money’s no good here right now, it’s on the house.
A man two stools down lifts his cup and just says, “Glad you’re alright, miss. ”
Luna gets both hands around the cup, and some of the gray goes out of her face. I watch the dark, sour edge burn off her scent a little at a time as she settles, the honey climbing back up warm underneath it. Warmer than I know it, honestly. Riper.
Must be relief, I think, breathing her in over the rim of my own cup. Her body letting go of a scare.
By the time the cups are near empty she’s shrugged her coat off one shoulder and looped it over her arm. “They really overheat these tents,” she says, and fans the open neck of her shirt.
The light’s gone orange across the field when I spot Ash and Reed cutting back down through the crowd, and one look tells me the whole story. Reed’s got a sheen on him and a thundercloud on his face. Ash is breathing hard with a frown on his face.
Reed reaches her first, both hands on her face, quick. “You okay? Tell me you’re okay.”
“I’m okay,” she says, with a small smile.
Ash is on her other side a half-step later, one hand at the back of her neck, the other circling her wrist. “You sure?” He doesn’t take his eyes off her until she nods.
“We lost him.” Reed’s words come out bitten in half. “By the time we crested the rise he was already fishtailing onto the county road.”
“He moved, I’ll give him that.” Ash drops onto the bench, flat. “Fear’s a hell of an engine. Man had a head start and he spent every inch of it.”
They both turn to me for the call. I’m the one with the badge, part-time or not, and the eldest.
“So what do we do?” Reed says. “We’ve got Maren as a direct witness. I can put six guys who owe me on every road out of this valley before full dark. We find where he’s bedded down, and you make the arrest.”
The want in me answers before my head can. I think about his hand closing on her arm, the dark sour fear it pumped into her scent, and God help me, an arrest with a long “conversation” on the end of it sounds like exactly the right weight of justice.
“Yeah.” I hear myself say it. “Let’s do it. Between what’s in the legal folder and what just happened, I’m pretty sure I can have a warrant pronto.”
“In the meantime.” And here Luna’s voice changes. Goes small. She looks around at the three of us, one at a time. “In the meantime, can you all just stay? Close? I know you’ve got calls to make. I just really want all of you near me right now. Is that okay?”
She doesn’t have to ask. Not for that.
“Of course,” I say.
“Always, beautiful.” Reed’s already folding in.
“You never have to ask us that,” Ash says, low.
And we close in around her, the four of us in one knot in the long orange light, Maren’s hand landing on Luna’s shoulder from the outside of it. And that’s when it hits me.
Her scent comes up off her in a wave. Thicker than the warm relief from before. Sweeter. It pours straight down into the bottom of my lungs and pulls.
Reed’s chest hitches against my arm. He goes rigid. Across the huddle Ash has gone very still, and his eyes come up and find mine over the top of her head, and I watch the same question land in him that just landed in me.
“Hey.” I get a knuckle under her chin and tip her face up. Her eyes are glassy, pupils blown wide and dark, and I can feel heat rolling off her skin through the front of my shirt. “Luna. You’re burning up, sweetheart. Let me get you something cold. Water, ice, anything. Sit down for a minute.”
“No.” The half-empty cider cup drops from her hand, clattering against the bench as she presses in tighter, both hands fisting my shirt. “No, I’m fine, I don’t need anything, I’m fine, I’m just—”
She stops as a long shudder rolls through her. Her knees dip, she slumps forward, and I’ve got an arm under her before she’s halfway to the grass.
“Luna!” The four of us say it at once.
She lifts her head. “Ow—I think my heat’s coming. Like, right now.”
***
We make it back to the orchard in under twenty minutes.
Luna’s got both hands pressed low on her belly and her forehead against the cool of the window, breathing in the long counts Reed’s been giving her since the county line.
Behind us Maren’s headlights swing in off the road and climb the lane two careful lengths back.
I’m out and around to Luna’s door before the engine’s all the way off.
She comes into my arms half-folded, and I take her weight, and the heat off her now is a different country from the cider tent.
The honey’s gone thick and the gooseberry edge is all sugar.
It reaches down into me and turns a screw I didn’t know I had.
I breathe through my teeth and get an arm under her knees.
“I’ve got you,” I tell her. “Let’s get you inside.”
“Wait.” Her hand flattens on my chest. “Wait. Put me down a second. I can stand.”
She can. Barely. But she does it, both feet under her, one fist still knotted in my shirt as Maren climbs out of her little hatchback.
“Mar.” Her voice is rough at the edges. “Babe, I’m so sorry I’m—” she doubles over, breath hissing out between her teeth. “Now I’m doing this. I wish we could’ve hung out longer. I’m sorry.”
Maren crosses the gravel and takes Luna’s face in both hands. “Hey. No. You do not apologize to me for your own body. Not ever.” She thumbs a damp strand of hair off Luna’s forehead. “And I was heading out tonight anyway. Now, you go take care of yourself.”
Then she looks past Luna, at the three of us. “You take good care of her.”
“We will,” I say.
“On our lives,” Reed says, and he means it so hard it comes out crooked.
“She’s the apple of our eyes,” Ash murmurs.
Maren’s mouth tips up. She seems to approve.
“You sure you’ve got to drive tonight?” I ask her. “It’s a long road back to Lakeview in the dark. We’ve got cabin seven made up, clean sheets, woodstove.”
For a second she really looks tempted, her eyes going off toward the dark shapes of the cabins.
“Tempting,” she admits. “God, that bed sounds good.” Then she shakes her head. “But no. I’ve got things waiting on me back home, and if I head out now I can cut the drive in half, get a room somewhere around the midpoint, finish it fresh in the morning.”
She pulls Luna in one more time. Luna folds into her and holds on.
“Sorry, babe,” Luna says again, muffled.
“Stop that.” Maren rubs a slow circle on her back. “It’s really fine. Don’t you spend one second of your heat feeling bad about me.” She pulls back and holds Luna’s eyes. “I’ll see you back in Lakeview. Soon.”
Luna grabs her hand, making a face which can only mean she’s in pain. “Love you. Love you, okay?” She squeezes Maren’s fingers. “Don’t forget the wine party. My place.”
“As if I’d miss it,” Maren says, offering a soft smile before she finally steps away and climbs into her car.
Her taillights find the lane and shrink into the distance, the car rocking over the pothole on the way out.
Then, the sound of her engine fades completely, leaving just the four of us standing in the yard beneath the glow of the porch light.
The second the road’s empty, Luna lets go of standing.
She sags, I catch her, and this time she doesn’t tell me to put her down. The honey that rolls up off her starts a growl and a purr in my chest at once.
“Okay, sweetheart,” I say, and lift her, and she turns her face into my neck and goes still there. “Okay. We’ve got you. You’re home.”
Home... her.